Sadly this is not because the British public are going to be spoilt for choice among so many attractive candidates but, as last time, it will be decided on who does the least badly and it's quite likely that nobody will win this time either.
Last time, the Conservatives should have thrashed Gordon Brown out of sight but they weren't convincing enough to win outright. Labour look like a similarly ill-prepared opposition this time. But whereas once the two major parties gained 98% of the popular vote, that figure is now struggling in the 65% area.
So, what impact will UKIP have on a General Election rather than a couple of convenient By Elections. Still quite a bit, one would think, but not necessarily turning that into a large wedge of seats. And Labour look set to collapse in Scotland on which they depend if they are to form a Westminster government, the referendum having done the SNP a whole lot of good apart from delivering the one thing that they stand for.
The Lib Dem vote is due to be wiped off the result board in all but a few constituencies. All those years building up seats since the six we, I mean they, had in the 1960's will be set back to the level of those dark days when they were the radical alternative and not briefly a party of government. I'm afraid it was inevitable, taking the blame for going in with Cameron but what else could they do. Even with Labour there weren't really enough seats to form an administration and there wasn't a will. Gordon didn't even look like someone who wanted to go on. But we should be more grateful to the Lib Dems for seeing out five years and surely acting as some restraint on a Conservative government that would have got away with far worse without them. It seems most unreasonable to me to berate them for not delivering manifesto promises when they were only awarded very junior partner status in the government that the election put in place
I can see a Conservative majority government being returned in six months' time and the next move, apart from some English devolution which could provide an almost permanent Conservative majority in England, will be the succession to follow Cameron which might be a gory Boris v. Osborne bout which will make many of us look back on the Cameron-Clegg era as a much-missed and undervalued Golden Age.
In Portsmouth North here, there is only Labour to vote for as an alternative to the Splashing Penny Mordaunt and one is hardly convinced by Ed. Andy Burnham is the leftist choice but what, exactly, can he be expected to achieve. And so, there might be a Green to vote for but I might just turn up and vote Lib Dem because there's not much I like more than underdogs, lost causes and long-held affinities.
But what does Paddy Power think. He makes a good living out of the fact that the likes of me don't know what will happen in horse races, football matches and even politics.
On the subject of the Government after the Next Election, he goes,
7/2 Labour majority
9/2 Con/Lib Dem
9/2 Conservative majority
9/2 Lab/Lib Dem
6/1 Conservative minority
13/2 Labour minority
and selected others include-
Coalition involving SNP 10/1 (how ironic),
Coalition involving UKIP 10/1
Lab/SNP 12/1
Con/Lib Dem/Green 66/1
Con/Lib/UKIP 100/1 (I can't see that but I did see Norton's Coin win the Gold Cup at that price)
UKIP 150/1
Whereas the odds on 'Prime Minister after Cameron' make most entertaining reading,
Evens, Ed Miliband
7/1 Boris
8 Andy Burnham
14 Theresa May
16 Yvette Cooper
20 Osborne
and selected other include-
Michael Gove 25/1 ( !!!!!)
Nigel Farage 50/1
Nick Clegg 66/1, which is the worst value 66/1 bet I have ever seen.
It is intriguing as a spectacle if not as a political debate. We know by now that principles and the good of the people are nowhere among most of these participants' motives and that their careers are what matter to them. As I heard said, 90% of what David Cameron wanted to do as Prime Minister was achieved when he first went through the door of no. 10.
I think the 9/2 about a Conservative majority government is worth a few bob at this stage and the tip for the next Prime Minister could be found when there is both enough of a Stop Boris campaign combined with a Stop Osborne campaign and Theresa May wins it in the same way that very few favourites have won Conservative leadership elections in recent decades.
One could hope that there will be sufficient further defections from Conservative to UKIP to make enough pro-European Conservatives re-align with whatever they can find among the remains of an old centre and we could go through the process of the Roy Jenkins SDP from the 1970's again. But what did become of that. And we have hoped in vain before.
